Speaker 1: Is it today? Is it today?
Speaker 2: Happy birthday?
Speaker 3: It is really humbling for me to have to call
Speaker 3: you up on my own birthday.
Speaker 2: First of all, shut your mouth.
Speaker 4: Do you want to wish me a belated happy birthday?
Speaker 4: Because my birthday came and went no.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: But do you remember I left you. I left you
Speaker 3: a really heartfelt belated birthday wish? Oh, it was really
Speaker 3: something I want you.
Speaker 2: To know about, something about me and my birthday. Yeah,
Speaker 2: my birthday is my birthday. It's not my birth week,
Speaker 2: it's not my birth month.
Speaker 5: It's my birthday.
Speaker 6: If you don't get me on the day, don't bother.
Speaker 2: I don't bother.
Speaker 4: Not interested?
Speaker 3: Hey, can I ask you?
Speaker 7: So?
Speaker 3: Since it's my birthday, can I ask you a question?
Speaker 3: Do you do any celebrity impressions?
Speaker 2: I already regret calling you to wish you a happy birthday?
Speaker 3: Not to nitpick, but I'm the one who called you
Speaker 3: From Gimblet Media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight.
Speaker 3: Today's episode, Beverly and Van Ashley comes to me with
Speaker 3: a love story. It begins like something straight out of
Speaker 3: the movies. A young woman meets a young man. They
Speaker 3: share a first kiss, They pledge their love, but then
Speaker 3: they marry other people and live out their days apart.
Speaker 3: Then they die and the credits roll. Ashley has never
Speaker 3: stopped wondering about this couple and why they never receive
Speaker 3: their happily ever after ending. And this is because the
Speaker 3: young woman in the story was Beverly Colom and she
Speaker 3: was Ashley's grandmother. Ashley and her grandmother were close. Ashley
Speaker 3: called her by an affectionate nickname.
Speaker 8: So she was a mamma.
Speaker 3: Mamma's her name, mamma. You called her your mammon, Mammon.
Speaker 8: We called her our mamma, like with a W at
Speaker 8: the end.
Speaker 3: In the evenings, Mammon and Ashley watched Jeopardy together, shouting
Speaker 3: their guesses at the TV. During commercials, they pressed mute
Speaker 3: and quietly read. For Ashley, everything her grandmother did was
Speaker 3: imbued with a certain glamor.
Speaker 8: She would roll her hair every evening, and I woke
Speaker 8: up really early as a kid, and I would help
Speaker 8: her take her pins out of her hair.
Speaker 3: She was so cool.
Speaker 8: I just wanted to know everything about.
Speaker 3: Her, So they'd spend a lot of time talking about movies,
Speaker 3: the family, and boys. For Ashley, this meant sharing stories
Speaker 3: about her different crushes, but for Beverly it only ever
Speaker 3: meant talking about one person.
Speaker 8: This man named Van. She would call him Van or
Speaker 8: my Van.
Speaker 3: Beverly life had been a hard one. Ashley knew her
Speaker 3: as a widow, but before then she'd been trapped in
Speaker 3: an unhappy marriage, raising five kids essentially on her own.
Speaker 3: She was a serious woman, not given to sentimentality, but
Speaker 3: when she spoke Van's name, her face would light up.
Speaker 3: She met Van in New Orleans in the late nineteen thirties.
Speaker 3: The two worked at the local newspaper. Van was a salesman,
Speaker 3: Beverly and entertainment reporter. But when she talked about those days,
Speaker 3: no matter how big the stars and the stories she told,
Speaker 3: it was always Van who took center stage.
Speaker 8: And it was clear that she had kind of set
Speaker 8: up the stories so that we would ask about him.
Speaker 8: Because you know when someone tells you a story and
Speaker 8: you know that they're really into it and they wanted
Speaker 8: to tell it more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she wanted to talk about him.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Sometimes the stories were nothing more than a choice. Dale
Speaker 3: barely an anecdote. Van had blue eyes. Van favored vests,
Speaker 3: the kind of non stories one tells when one is
Speaker 3: in love. But Beverly always insisted that she and Van
Speaker 3: wererent in love. She said they were just friends.
Speaker 8: I mean, so, I like, I think when there's just
Speaker 8: such a there's such a disconnect, right, there's a disconnect
Speaker 8: with like how much she mentions him and then how
Speaker 8: much she protests that like they're just friends.
Speaker 3: Ashley never bought the whole just friend's thing, and she's
Speaker 3: always wanted to prove that it was more that Beverly
Speaker 3: and Van's relationship was a great, untold romance. Ashley says
Speaker 3: that in Beverly's old age, her musings about the past
Speaker 3: became increasingly frequent. The family began to record these recollections
Speaker 3: so they'd have a record of Beverly's life, and in
Speaker 3: these recordings, the name Van pops up over and over again.
Speaker 3: I asked Ashley to play me the recordings so I
Speaker 3: can hear what she heard, the southern accent, to delight
Speaker 3: in Beverly's voice, the romantic tenderness as she speaks of
Speaker 3: her Van. As the tape begins, I'm amazed by the
Speaker 3: voice reaching out from the past.
Speaker 2: It just did.
Speaker 9: A book time.
Speaker 3: Amazed, that is, and offended as an audio producer by
Speaker 3: how crappy, the sound quality is. Ashley tells me the
Speaker 3: family employed the questionable interview Watergate bugging technique of hiding
Speaker 3: a dictaphone under a couch cushion. They believe that in
Speaker 3: this way, Beverly wouldn't know she was being recorded and
Speaker 3: grow self conscious. Ashley then had the tape transcribed, and
Speaker 3: then you told your grandmother. You're like, hey, surprise, Yeah,
Speaker 3: we were recording you, and we transcribed this and she
Speaker 3: wasn't upset. She was touched.
Speaker 8: No, she hated it. Oh that we hadn't spell checked it.
Speaker 8: There were like a lot of typos.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's what she took exception to with the fact
Speaker 3: that there was bad spelling. It wasn't that you had
Speaker 3: actually like wiretapped her personal history or anything.
Speaker 8: Yeah. I remember her even fixing them, like circling them
Speaker 8: in like red pen.
Speaker 3: Because the recording sounds like David Sedaris stuck in a
Speaker 3: gym locker. I asked Ashley to read the role of
Speaker 3: Beverly from her poorly spellcheck transcriptions.
Speaker 8: So when she first introduces him, she says, Van was
Speaker 8: a salesman at the time in the display advertising department
Speaker 8: of the paper, and we've gradually became friends through encounters
Speaker 8: in the elevator halls and his frequent visits to the newsroom.
Speaker 3: So that's how she talked. This was not written language.
Speaker 8: No, that's how she talked.
Speaker 3: People talked like that back then. A little copy editor
Speaker 3: in the mouth, red pan circling jibber, crossing out the jabber.
Speaker 3: Van and Beverly developed an office flirtation, and eventually Van
Speaker 3: declared his true feelings about Charlie Wicker, a sportswriter in
Speaker 3: the newsroom.
Speaker 8: Van stopped by my desk and abruptly asked, do you
Speaker 8: date Charlie Wicker? No, why, I replied, to which he explained,
Speaker 8: I've been wanting to ask you for a date for
Speaker 8: a long time, and I couldn't bring myself to date
Speaker 8: anyone who would go out with Wicker.
Speaker 3: With Wicker out of the picker, Beverly and Van began
Speaker 3: to date, which led to their first kiss. For Beverly
Speaker 3: all of nineteen, it was her first kiss ever. When
Speaker 3: Beverly shared the story of the kiss with Ashley, her granddaughter,
Speaker 3: took it as proof positive of their romance, but Beverly
Speaker 3: corrected her, claiming that it wasn't a romantic kiss. She
Speaker 3: only kissed Van because she was so comfortable with him,
Speaker 3: and she wanted to see what kissing was like. According
Speaker 3: to Ashley, Van was something between a dance partner and
Speaker 3: a partner in crime. The fred to Beverly's ginger, he
Speaker 3: escorted her all over town. He nicknamed her Duck. When
Speaker 3: the US entered World War Two, Van enlisted in the
Speaker 3: Air Force and was stationed in North Africa. While overseas,
Speaker 3: he wrote to Beverly back home in New Orleans, and
Speaker 3: after her death, Ashley discovered the correspondence. Beverly had kept
Speaker 3: the letters her whole life.
Speaker 8: So June eighteenth, nineteen forty four, Dearest Duck, It's about
Speaker 8: five pm here now, and I was thinking how nice
Speaker 8: it would be if I were inn for the weekend.
Speaker 8: I would be just getting up in order to get
Speaker 8: dressed and pick you up for eleven thirty Mass. We
Speaker 8: would have a whole wonderful day in front of us.
Speaker 8: Of course, the highlight of the whole affair would be
Speaker 8: just being with you. You are so close to my thoughts
Speaker 8: that it's sometimes difficult for me to realize that there
Speaker 8: are so many thousands of miles separating us. I would
Speaker 8: gladly spend one thousand dollars just to see you for
Speaker 8: ten minutes, or even just to talk to you on
Speaker 8: the telephone. I'm thinking of you every minute of the
Speaker 8: day and night. Love you with all my heart.
Speaker 3: Vam Well, that really, I mean, that really sounds like
Speaker 3: a love letter.
Speaker 8: That's a love letter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a love letter. Ashley pulls out more letters.
Speaker 8: I might add, too, Duck that now, almost three years later,
Speaker 8: you look even prettier and I thrill as much or
Speaker 8: more every time I see. If I were there now,
Speaker 8: i'd know that soon from around the corner it would
Speaker 8: come a terribly welcome sight you and a brown or pink.
Speaker 8: It'd be too long that I'll be home again and
Speaker 8: have a toast for us forever, because I love you
Speaker 8: with all my heart as always Van.
Speaker 3: Evidently Ashley's not the only one who didn't buy the
Speaker 3: whole platonic routine. Here she is reading from the transcripts again.
Speaker 8: None of my friends or family could understand how two
Speaker 8: people could see so much of each other and not
Speaker 8: be a hot romance.
Speaker 3: Everyone in the newsroom teased them constantly. Van's own mother
Speaker 3: was so eager for her son to propose to Beverly
Speaker 3: that she gave him an heirloom diamond ring to present
Speaker 3: to her, but Van never did present the ring to Beverly.
Speaker 3: He proposed to someone else. After the engagement was announced.
Speaker 3: One of Van's close friends, Dick, approached Beverly conspiratorially.
Speaker 8: When Van became engaged to his first wife, Frances, Dick
Speaker 8: cornered me one night and told me that all I
Speaker 8: had to do was quote say the word, and the
Speaker 8: engagement would be off.
Speaker 3: But Beverly never did say the word. Poor Dick, Beverly said,
Speaker 3: he never could understand Mayan Van's relationship. Not long afterwards,
Speaker 3: Beverly also became engaged, so.
Speaker 8: She got a proposal from from.
Speaker 3: Ashley struggles to remember the name, and I'm taking aback
Speaker 3: because the name is in fact that of her own grandfather, a.
Speaker 8: Man named Llewellyn Brickin. It's funny that that's hard for
Speaker 8: me to remember. But he was from like a fancy
Speaker 8: family in Alabama. And she said, yes, growing up, I
Speaker 8: never heard stories of this guy, of my grandfather, like
Speaker 8: from my grandmother. Nothing nothing good, nothing bad, just like
Speaker 8: he was a ghost.
Speaker 3: The grandkids grew up knowing nothing about their grandfather. But
Speaker 3: everything about Van, a man who had no role in
Speaker 3: the family. Ashley's older brother, Lloyd, remembers finding it all
Speaker 3: very confusing as a kid.
Speaker 7: I remember her talking about Van and being like confused
Speaker 7: about whether Van was Gams my grandfather, like as if
Speaker 7: Van was Gams at a younger age, his name had
Speaker 7: been Van earlier.
Speaker 3: It wasn't until age five that Lloyd discovered he even
Speaker 3: had a grandfather. The family never saw Llewellyn, he was
Speaker 3: always in his room. On a visit to Beverly's house,
Speaker 3: Lloyd and his younger brother spotted a figure shuffling through
Speaker 3: a dimly lid hallway, so the like, who is that man? Terrified,
Speaker 3: Lloyd tried to tell his mother what he'd seen.
Speaker 4: My mother sat down like somberly, and she was like,
Speaker 4: that's your grandfather, Huh. Would you like to go and
Speaker 4: meet him?
Speaker 3: Lloyd did not want to go meet him. Still, their
Speaker 3: mother ushered him and his baby brother into the bedroom
Speaker 3: where the man sat dozing in a chair. Lloyd's mother
Speaker 3: nudged Lloyd forward until he was almost up against his
Speaker 3: grandfather's knees, and she.
Speaker 4: Touches him on the shoulder and she says, Daddy and
Speaker 4: his eyes open up, and she says, Daddy, I want
Speaker 4: you to meet your grandsons. And he he seems alone, disoriented,
Speaker 4: and he looks at us for like for some seconds,
Speaker 4: and he says, when you get older, you need to
Speaker 4: go to Argentina. The most beautiful women in the world
Speaker 4: are in Argentina. And I swear to you you like
Speaker 4: like just kind of goes back to sleep in the chair,
Speaker 4: and that was that.
Speaker 3: Ashley has always wondered why her grandmother chose Llewellyn, a
Speaker 3: ghost who gave unsolicited travel advice, over Van, the man
Speaker 3: she was meant to be with. So I try to find.
Speaker 5: Out, Hello, Jonathan, you're quite prompt.
Speaker 3: This is Lloyd, and Ashley's mom knocks, and being called
Speaker 3: prompt in that Southern accent of hers makes me happier
Speaker 3: than a dead possum laying in the sunshine. While I
Speaker 3: can't say I've spent much time in the American South,
Speaker 3: I have seen a lot of foghorn leghorn cartoons, and
Speaker 3: so I try my best to respond in kind. Just
Speaker 3: try to be on time, ma'am.
Speaker 2: Just try to be on.
Speaker 5: Time, ma'am. I'll say, whatever this is, Marian.
Speaker 3: I also phone up Ashley's aunt, Marian, Why do you
Speaker 3: think that in the end your mom chose your dad.
Speaker 10: Well, you know, when she would tell us, she said
Speaker 10: he is the smartest, had the cutest personality, the most fond,
Speaker 10: just could wide up a room. You know, who knows
Speaker 10: what makes people really fall in love?
Speaker 3: As a kid? I mean, did it seem as though
Speaker 3: it was a loving marriage.
Speaker 2: At first?
Speaker 3: At first? Llewellyn doated on Beverly hiring a staff of
Speaker 3: people to look after their home. At first, Llewellyn was charming,
Speaker 3: the kind of guy who never drink at parties so
Speaker 3: that he could drive everyone home. At first, it must
Speaker 3: have felt like Beverly was embarking on a wonderful life,
Speaker 3: and it must have felt terrible when it didn't last.
Speaker 5: My father wasn't happy about being wealthy. He wanted to
Speaker 5: be super wealthy, so he did a lot of investing
Speaker 5: in a lot of not very safe companies, and his
Speaker 5: you know, his wealth disappeared very rapidly, and he wasn't
Speaker 5: able to handle that, and so he became an alcoholic
Speaker 5: and stated an alcoholic his whole life.
Speaker 3: Llewellyn went from charming to mean.
Speaker 5: He was exceedingly violent, toward our mother. Never was violent
Speaker 5: toward us, but he would wreck rooms.
Speaker 3: Okay, Llewellyn lost everything, and thus so did Beverly. She
Speaker 3: went tumbling from a life of luxury to one of struggle,
Speaker 3: forced to work two jobs in order to provide for
Speaker 3: five kids and a husband who said in a room
Speaker 3: and drank all day.
Speaker 5: Mother never threw him out. She did not believe in divorce.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: She was a very strong, believing Catholic.
Speaker 3: And she never looked back.
Speaker 10: Oh, I don't know. She never would have told us that.
Speaker 10: She just said, you make your bed, you lie in it,
Speaker 10: and just made the best of everything.
Speaker 3: But to quote my podcast brother Alex Baldwin, here's the thing.
Speaker 3: Through it all, Beverly still had Van. Even though they
Speaker 3: married other people and lived hundreds of miles apart. Van
Speaker 3: and Beverly remained close. Though neither Knox nor Marian ever
Speaker 3: met Van, they felt his presence all throughout their childhoods.
Speaker 3: Van's phone calls were frequent. Marian remembers how the spiral
Speaker 3: cord of the hallway phone would snake into Beverly's bedroom
Speaker 3: when he called.
Speaker 10: We knew when Van called not to interrupt her. It
Speaker 10: was so light she was back in the good old days,
Speaker 10: like she was on a I'm not saying on a
Speaker 10: date with him, but maybe like that.
Speaker 5: She normally talked to him at least once a month.
Speaker 2: They would joke.
Speaker 5: They would have conversations for hours if they wanted.
Speaker 3: To, over a course of How long was this was
Speaker 3: this the case?
Speaker 5: Probably forty fifty years?
Speaker 4: Oh my goodness, many many years.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Mother had gone through Francis's cancer and her death and
Speaker 5: supported him.
Speaker 3: That was his first wife. Yeah, and after when Van's
Speaker 3: wife died and your dad died, Why do you think
Speaker 3: Van and your mother didn't marry at that point?
Speaker 5: Oh well, okay, these things did not happen at the
Speaker 5: same time.
Speaker 2: Okay, my father didn't die.
Speaker 5: Till mother was in her sixties. Fan had already remarried.
Speaker 3: By the time Llewellyn died. Van had been remarried six years. Beverly,
Speaker 3: for her part, never remarried, remaining stubbornly alone. To Ashley,
Speaker 3: it seemed the couple that was meant to be had
Speaker 3: missed their moment, and after that the timing was never right.
Speaker 3: Ashley visited Beverly a few months before she died because
Speaker 3: she knew it always lifted her grandmother's spirits. She asked
Speaker 3: after Van.
Speaker 8: She said that she hadn't heard from him in a while,
Speaker 8: and I told her that she should call him, and
Speaker 8: she refused. And her explaination to me at the time
Speaker 8: was that women don't call men.
Speaker 3: Hmmm.
Speaker 8: And I thought it was a joke, but she was serious. Yeah,
Speaker 8: And she never called him.
Speaker 3: Beverly and Van never spoke again, and later that year
Speaker 3: Beverly died. So Ashley is left with the burden of
Speaker 3: her grandmother's tale of what never was, and now she
Speaker 3: wants to know if somewhere out there there were people
Speaker 3: who share that sense of loss over a thing that
Speaker 3: never existed. She wants to find out if the same
Speaker 3: way Beverly's family had a Van, Van's family had a Beverly.
Speaker 8: I just think, like, did they hear about us? Do
Speaker 8: you know what I mean? Like, were we as important
Speaker 8: it was? Was my grandmother as important in like Van's
Speaker 8: stories or not?
Speaker 3: What would that? What would that bring?
Speaker 8: I think I think it would mean that that that
Speaker 8: that she meant something, you know, that her life wasn't
Speaker 8: this kind of sad struggle, but that she had had
Speaker 8: like a bigger life than the life that I saw
Speaker 8: that she was, like, really loved.
Speaker 3: I get to work researching Van's family tree. Maybe, like Beverly,
Speaker 3: Van had a special relationship with one of his grandkids,
Speaker 3: someone he might have shared his heart with. So I
Speaker 3: phone up his grandson, but in the way of romantic
Speaker 3: Beverly stories, he doesn't have much to offer. Next, I
Speaker 3: email his granddaughter, who writes back, my interactions with my
Speaker 3: grandfather were sparse and perfunctory. I love and respect him dearly,
Speaker 3: but that's just how it was. I actually have some
Speaker 3: regret about this now that he is gone and I
Speaker 3: am older.
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 3: Hi, is this Webby?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 7: Hello?
Speaker 3: Is this Debbie?
Speaker 9: Yes?
Speaker 3: I decided to move up the family tree to Van's daughters,
Speaker 3: Debbie and Webby. Debbie owns her own store.
Speaker 2: I'm in the middle of whale and then d.
Speaker 3: And Webby works in design. Is it web design?
Speaker 2: Interior design?
Speaker 3: Oh? Because I thought it would be fun if you're
Speaker 3: because you do web design and your name is well, yeah.
Speaker 3: I want to know if Beverly Colomb was a presence
Speaker 3: in their lives, and so I put the question to
Speaker 3: them with an elegant economy.
Speaker 9: Beverly, Oh, Beverly that he used to date way back then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, I mean he referred to her. Also,
Speaker 2: he was crazy about Beverly, and I just know that
Speaker 2: it really really liked her. As soon as you hear
Speaker 2: the name, it just brings back, you know, a warmth.
Speaker 3: I'm hoping to find some proof of an abiding romance
Speaker 3: that I can share with Ashley. But Webby and Debbie
Speaker 3: don't have many Beverly anecdotes. So I asked who else
Speaker 3: might be able to illuminate what Van and Beverly meant
Speaker 3: to each other?
Speaker 2: Who is alive that would still remember that they're all gone?
Speaker 3: Webby tells me that if Van were still alive, he'd
Speaker 3: be more than one hundred years old. His brothers, his
Speaker 3: war buddies are all gone. His youngest daughter, who he
Speaker 3: was closest with, died young. I talked to a couple
Speaker 3: of Van's sons in law, no dice, but it occurs
Speaker 3: to me that Van has one last family relation who
Speaker 3: might remember Beverly, someone in fact, who might have been
Speaker 3: in the house huttering around in the background during those
Speaker 3: marathon telephone calls. What about your stepmother?
Speaker 2: Oh, I haven't talked to her since I split up.
Speaker 2: That ended best we don't even talk about the stepmother.
Speaker 2: Oh God, I wish it had been Beverly.
Speaker 3: Van was married to his second wife, Barbara, for twenty
Speaker 3: five years. Towards the end of Van's life, Debbie remembers
Speaker 3: showing up one day to their home in New Orleans.
Speaker 2: I walked in the house and she had him walking
Speaker 2: around with a diaper on with a robe open, while
Speaker 2: she had three other people playing cards, playing bridge. And
Speaker 2: that's it. That's the end, you know, I just started
Speaker 2: taking over.
Speaker 9: I was horrified.
Speaker 2: I mean, I quit my job, everything, I mean, because
Speaker 2: I was one of Anyway.
Speaker 3: Van was showing signs of dementia and his health was
Speaker 3: deteriorating rapidly. After that visit, Debbie decided to move in.
Speaker 3: He was around this time, a time when Van might
Speaker 3: have most wanted to hear Beverly's voice. That he'd stopped phoning,
Speaker 3: and so for the first time in fifty years, Beverly
Speaker 3: and Van were going at life without each other, all
Speaker 3: possibly because Van had forgotten her phone number. And then
Speaker 3: came Hurricane Katrina.
Speaker 2: Those the last months of his life worked really very tough, yeah,
Speaker 2: very very tough from Katrina. Because he died in October.
Speaker 2: The storm, of course, was in August. His wife, she
Speaker 2: moved out when he was dying.
Speaker 3: That had to be very hard for your dad.
Speaker 2: Very hard. She left him malone at his worst time
Speaker 2: of need. So we all gathered around him and we
Speaker 2: had three had his three girls, and he was happy enough.
Speaker 2: But you know, yeah, I say, where's my wife?
Speaker 9: Hello?
Speaker 3: Hi, this is Jonathan Goldstein speaking.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, Jonathan, hold on, I'm gonna hand the fund
Speaker 2: to my mother.
Speaker 9: It's joh Okay.
Speaker 3: Hello, Hi, missus Bailey.
Speaker 9: Fine, fine. I hope I can be some help, but
Speaker 9: I don't know if I can.
Speaker 3: Van's second wife, Barbara, is now ninety three, and she
Speaker 3: experienced the end of Van's life differently than his daughter's.
Speaker 3: Around the time of Katrina, Barbara was almost eighty. She
Speaker 3: was scared and wanted to leave New Orleans, but couldn't
Speaker 3: get Van to leave with her.
Speaker 9: Katrina was just terrible. I couldn't handle Van. He was
Speaker 9: ill and had to be helped in and out of
Speaker 9: bed and everything, and Debbie was they of doing that,
Speaker 9: and so I couldn't take him. I wanted to leave.
Speaker 9: I wanted to evacuate, and they didn't want to evacuate,
Speaker 9: and I couldn't. I couldn't take they They wouldn't go
Speaker 9: with me to my brothers, and they were just going
Speaker 9: to stay there. And of course then they got caught.
Speaker 3: In the end, Van couldn't even be buried. All the
Speaker 3: cemeteries in New Orleans were flooded.
Speaker 9: It was a myth, you know. There was a lot
Speaker 9: of Katrina that we wished didn't happen.
Speaker 3: Most of Van's keepsakes were destroyed in the hurricane. So
Speaker 3: while Beverly's family has letters and photographs, Van's family has nothing.
Speaker 3: The record of his inner life is rapidly disappearing. I
Speaker 3: asked Barbara if the name Beverly means anything to her.
Speaker 9: I remember the name, the name was very familiar, but
Speaker 9: I don't remember anything else really, And in fact, i'm
Speaker 9: thinking about it, I don't remember hearing a lot about
Speaker 9: Van's life with the paper.
Speaker 3: Barbara married Van in nineteen eighty. Van was sixty years old.
Speaker 3: His newspaper day is far behind him.
Speaker 9: Being a second wife, you don't talk about the old
Speaker 9: time with the other wife, you know what I'm trying
Speaker 9: to say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can imagine that that would make sense. Was
Speaker 3: this a second marriage for you as well? Yes, yes,
Speaker 3: how did you guys meet?
Speaker 9: Well, we met. My daughter Becca and his daughter Debbie
Speaker 9: were friends.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 9: Now I was having a party and Debbie said, would
Speaker 9: I invite her daddy? And so I did. This is
Speaker 9: my favorite story. And then at the end of the
Speaker 9: evening she said, why don't you ask miss Rutledge to dinner?
Speaker 9: And he said, which one is she? And I had
Speaker 9: been his hostess he was he was at my house
Speaker 9: and he says, which one is she?
Speaker 3: How would you describe the courtship?
Speaker 9: I guess you'd say low key, you know. Yeah, I
Speaker 9: don't know if your second husband is ever the great love.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: What I'm trying to say, is there is there someone
Speaker 3: when when I do say like the you know, great
Speaker 3: love of your life, is there someone that comes to mind?
Speaker 9: Well? I was in love with my first husband. Yeah,
Speaker 9: and I won't say that I didn't love Vane, but
Speaker 9: it wasn't you know, it wasn't like young love.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he liked her a lot, but he didn't love
Speaker 2: her in the way he loved my mother.
Speaker 3: This is Webby again. She says that like Barbara, Van's
Speaker 3: feelings for a second spouse couldn't compare with the kind
Speaker 3: of love you can feel when you're young.
Speaker 2: It wasn't the romance of a lifetime, but he was
Speaker 2: a man and he loved her and he didn't want
Speaker 2: to be alone.
Speaker 3: On the subject of young love and romance of a lifetime,
Speaker 3: I bring up Beverly again, presenting a theory that Van
Speaker 3: and Beverly were in love and meant to be, but
Speaker 3: that Beverly had chosen the wrong suitor. She'd refused Van
Speaker 3: until it was too late.
Speaker 2: He was not shot down by Beverly that I know, Uh.
Speaker 3: Huh, I mean the sense that I get from He.
Speaker 2: Never imitated that he was in love with Beverly Cola.
Speaker 2: There was something deep between them, but it wasn't love
Speaker 2: and marriage and baby carriage.
Speaker 3: Do you have any sense of why that was? Why
Speaker 3: they didn't end up going in that direction?
Speaker 10: Wow?
Speaker 2: I meant you had a friend that you're a door,
Speaker 2: but you're not in love with.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 2: There you have it, because if if it was not
Speaker 2: that way, they would have been married.
Speaker 3: Even the letters Van wrote Beverly during the war are
Speaker 3: taken differently than Ashley had taken them.
Speaker 2: I think this was all pre My mother was Beverly
Speaker 2: and Van, you know they were. That was before he
Speaker 2: met my mother.
Speaker 3: The reason Webby and Debbie don't have much in the
Speaker 3: way of Van and Beverly anecdotes might be because they just
Speaker 3: never needed them. They're not invested in unearthing some great
Speaker 3: love story for Van because they believe he already had
Speaker 3: one with their mother, Whereas Beverly and Llewellyn had a
Speaker 3: bad marriage, Van and Francis had a good one. You've
Speaker 3: had some water, I've had some.
Speaker 8: I've had a lot of I have a lot of coffee,
Speaker 8: and I have had a lot of coffee.
Speaker 3: And you will have coffee should you choose to have them.
Speaker 3: Having talked to everyone, I could I get back in
Speaker 3: touch with Ashley. So we talked with Webby and Debbie,
Speaker 3: and then I spoke with I tell her that while
Speaker 3: I couldn't find anything to support a romance, that didn't
Speaker 3: mean Beverly wasn't important to Van's family. I explain how
Speaker 3: instantly everyone recognized Beverly's name, knew your grandmother's name that
Speaker 3: had resonance for them. Yeah, and there are two other
Speaker 3: things I'd come to learn during my conversations with Van's family.
Speaker 3: The first comes from Webby, Well, she.
Speaker 2: Was my godmother who was Beverly.
Speaker 3: Over the years, Van's wife, Francis, became close friends with
Speaker 3: Beverly too, and Van and Francis wanted Beverly to remain
Speaker 3: connected to their family forever.
Speaker 2: They made her my godmother. You know, that's quite an
Speaker 2: honor to bestow upon a friend, to ask them to
Speaker 2: do that for you.
Speaker 3: So you're first born, Oh my gosh, you didn't to
Speaker 3: know about this, right, this is news.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I didn't know anything. I didn't know no no idea, yeah,
Speaker 8: no idea. And my grandmother was pretty Her faith was
Speaker 8: really important to her. And I am sure that that
Speaker 8: meant the world to her. I'm sure she took that
Speaker 8: really seriously.
Speaker 3: And then there's the second thing. I learned, a small,
Speaker 3: strange thing that I'm not even sure is a thing.
Speaker 3: Throughout my conversations with Van's family, there was one oddly
Speaker 3: specific Beverly and Van's story that everyone seemed to know.
Speaker 3: In fact, it was the only story they all seemed
Speaker 3: to know. No matter who I spoke to, kids, grandkids,
Speaker 3: sons in law, it kept popping up again and again.
Speaker 3: Back in their newspaper days, Van escorted Beverly to the
Speaker 3: showbiz party she reported on, and they met the biggest
Speaker 3: stars of the day, among them Dicky Mickey Rooney, who
Speaker 3: appeared in more than three hundred films over the course
Speaker 3: of an eighty eight year career. Mickey Rooney began as
Speaker 3: a child star, appearing in a half dozen movies opposite
Speaker 3: his friend Judy Garland, but according to Vanity Fair, he
Speaker 3: was also quote the original Hollywood train wreck one who,
Speaker 3: by the accounts of Van's family, train wrecked his way
Speaker 3: into Van and Beverly.
Speaker 2: I just heard one story about Mickey Rooney at one
Speaker 2: of the parties. I know he was disappointed in Mickey Roone.
Speaker 4: You remember him saying something along the line, I hate
Speaker 4: that Mickey Roney.
Speaker 3: Every telling is slightly different, but all of the stories
Speaker 3: have one thing in common.
Speaker 4: Currently, Mickey was a little bit on the crass side
Speaker 4: the thing.
Speaker 2: He said something crude and lude sexually led to a
Speaker 2: woman at the park. He was making crass.
Speaker 3: Remarks, crass remarks in the presence of Van Date for
Speaker 3: the evening one, Beverly Colom.
Speaker 2: And my father went over there. I'm kind of pulled
Speaker 2: Hi by the collar and said, you say that again,
Speaker 2: and I'm gonna knock you out.
Speaker 8: I do recall him saying something like I punched that
Speaker 8: guy right in the nose one time.
Speaker 2: You know Cowarde, and my father was six feet so
Speaker 2: he was much bigger. He said he had to be
Speaker 2: restrained not to want to throw him out the window.
Speaker 3: Do you know who Mickey Rooney is?
Speaker 8: Oh? Yeah, my grandmother hated him.
Speaker 3: Hi, what do you know? Why?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 3: No, every person that I spoke to, practically from Van's family,
Speaker 3: had a story that involved Van, your grandmother and Mickey Rooney.
Speaker 8: Stop it.
Speaker 3: No, I'm not kidding. Some some variation on it, because
Speaker 3: you know so he he was her escort and and
Speaker 3: there was a Hollywood party. I searched for newspaper coverage
Speaker 3: of this fight between Van and Mickey Rooney, and while
Speaker 3: I didn't find that exactly, I did find an article
Speaker 3: Beverly wrote about a big celebrity party in New Orleans
Speaker 3: in the fall of nineteen forty three, the exact party
Speaker 3: where she and Van would have met Mickey Rooney and
Speaker 3: where Mickey Rooney would have met Van's fist. Found some
Speaker 3: of your grandmother's articles. Oh you did, have you ever
Speaker 3: read any of them?
Speaker 8: Never?
Speaker 2: Here?
Speaker 3: Take a look. Yeah, oh my god. Ashley gazes down
Speaker 3: at the article cool, a big smile on her face.
Speaker 8: Movie stars are all a twinkle as they go out
Speaker 8: to do the town.
Speaker 2: Ooh.
Speaker 8: If you didn't already know the mass of film fans
Speaker 8: jamming the Roosevelts soon made it plain Mickey Rooney and
Speaker 8: Judy Garland were on the scene. I mean, look, at
Speaker 8: least she reserved her personal feelings about Mickey Rooney from
Speaker 8: the paper.
Speaker 3: Right, she was a journalist, and so am I a journalist?
Speaker 3: That is, I am too a journalist, which is why
Speaker 3: I read in its near entirety Mickey Rooney's autobiography Life
Speaker 3: is Too Short, a fun bit of wordplay. As Mickey
Speaker 3: was a scant five foot two in his stockinged feet,
Speaker 3: I search for confirmation of his having scuffled with the
Speaker 3: six foot tall van. And while I learned that Mickey
Speaker 3: was born on a dining room table and that he
Speaker 3: was once visited by an angel while eating breakfast at
Speaker 3: Harris Casino, there's no mention of a party in New
Speaker 3: Orleans in nineteen forty three. Hello Kelly, Kelly Rooney, Hight
Speaker 3: Jonathan and so I phone up Kelly, Mickey Rooney's daughter.
Speaker 3: I explained how her father might be the leading man
Speaker 3: in the most prevalent story anyone has about Van and Beverly,
Speaker 3: and Van got into an, I guess, an altercation with
Speaker 3: your father. Oh oh, and so I guess. I was
Speaker 3: just wondering, like, how likely does that seem to you?
Speaker 6: I hadn't heard of that situation, but I had heard
Speaker 6: of situations where my dad had been in heated discussions.
Speaker 3: Like it wouldn't be so out of the ordinary that
Speaker 3: perhaps your father.
Speaker 6: Exactly exactly, you know, my dad was a force to
Speaker 6: be reckoned with, so I don't doubt that maybe he
Speaker 6: could have gotten into a ruckus with somebody.
Speaker 3: Kelly was born well after the Van incident. Her mother
Speaker 3: was Mickey Rooney's fifth wife. He was married eight times
Speaker 3: in total. He spent his whole life hoping that the
Speaker 3: next marriage would be the one where the love would stick,
Speaker 3: but Mickey ended up spending his final years alone. By
Speaker 3: the end of his life, he'd arrived at a simple
Speaker 3: conclusion about why to be with someone that he passed
Speaker 3: on to his children. My sister said to.
Speaker 6: Him one time, Dad, you know I'm getting divorced, And
Speaker 6: he says, well, let me ask you something.
Speaker 3: Did you love him? And she said, yes, Daddy, I did.
Speaker 6: I loved him, and he says, well, did you like him?
Speaker 8: Did you like the way he treated you? Did you
Speaker 8: like the way he treated others?
Speaker 6: And he really taught us that it's not about all
Speaker 6: the I love you babies and the sex and this
Speaker 6: and that. He said, you really have to be in.
Speaker 3: Like his relationship with Judy Garland, that was never romantic.
Speaker 6: No, I don't believe so. I mean, they met so young,
Speaker 6: you know. We used to ask him that, well, why
Speaker 6: didn't marry Judy? He said, well, it would have been
Speaker 6: like marrying my sister.
Speaker 1: He said.
Speaker 8: I was in love with her. I was in like
Speaker 8: with her.
Speaker 6: She was my world, so I felt, I mean, he
Speaker 6: really loved her, He really loved her, and he would
Speaker 6: have done anything to have tried to save her, and
Speaker 6: did try to.
Speaker 3: Judy Garland died at the age of forty seven from
Speaker 3: a drug overdose. And Life is Too Short, Mickey writes
Speaker 3: of Judy, it seemed as if we'd known each other forever,
Speaker 3: that we were destined to be best friends. Mickey would
Speaker 3: take Judy out for chocolate malts to cheer her up.
Speaker 3: He'd answer the phone when she called at three am.
Speaker 3: Anytime Judy he said, you call and I'll be here
Speaker 3: for you. It's always been that way. Like Judy and Mickey,
Speaker 3: Van and Beverly had been just friends. Only it wasn't
Speaker 3: just friends for a man and a woman, especially at
Speaker 3: that time, to have a friendship that spanned decades and
Speaker 3: great distance, war and marriages and children was a rarer
Speaker 3: thing than a mere romance. And maybe that's why no
Speaker 3: one believed Beverly when she said they were just friends.
Speaker 3: So while the story of Beverly and Van might not
Speaker 3: be the love story Ashley was hoping for, Beverly Colom
Speaker 3: had been loved.
Speaker 8: There's something really big about someone who knows you so
Speaker 8: well and continues to want to know you.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine that?
Speaker 8: No? I think it's really hard to stick with people
Speaker 8: through there are many iterations in life, right, It's really
Speaker 8: hard to meet somebody at sixteen and be with them
Speaker 8: as they change into a totally different person. By I mean,
Speaker 8: I'm only I'm thirty three, right, So have.
Speaker 3: You already seen this even at thirty three?
Speaker 8: Yeah, of course, I mean there are people that like
Speaker 8: I loved so much and we don't have much in
Speaker 8: common anymore. I think it was the biggest relationship of
Speaker 8: her life.
Speaker 3: You know, you began this thing, imagining this great untold
Speaker 3: love story and wanting to actually learn about it.
Speaker 8: And I don't care about the love story anymore, I
Speaker 8: really don't. I'm good good, I'm good with that multi
Speaker 8: year friendship. I'm just so happy that they had each other.
Speaker 8: How lucky these people were. Van and Bev.
Speaker 3: Beverly's life was a struggle. She would come home exhausted
Speaker 3: after a long day of work and there would be
Speaker 3: five mouths to feed and Llewellyn drunk. But then the
Speaker 3: phone would ring, and Beverly would smile and duck into
Speaker 3: the other room, and there, reaching out from hundreds of
Speaker 3: miles away, was her Van. It was always that way.
Speaker 1: Now that the fernentures roof, turning to its goodwill home,
Speaker 1: Now that the last month's rant is scheming, with the
Speaker 1: damage to possible, take this moment to dissolve.
Speaker 8: If we meant him, if we talked serious but felt
Speaker 8: around for far too.
Speaker 3: From things that accidentally talk. This episode of Heavyweight was
Speaker 3: produced by Khalila Holt and me Jonathan Goldstein, along with
Speaker 3: Stevie Lane and Ba Parker. The show is edited by
Speaker 3: Jorge just Special Thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Bloomberg, Fia Bennin,
Speaker 3: and Jackie Cohen. Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original
Speaker 3: music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, Blue Dot Sessions,
Speaker 3: and Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can be found on
Speaker 3: our website, Gimbletmedia dot com slash Heavyweight. Our theme song
Speaker 3: is by the weaker Lands courtesy of Epitaph Records, and
Speaker 3: our ad music is by Hailey Shaw. Follow us on
Speaker 3: Twitter at Heavyweight or email us at Heavyweight at gimltmedia
Speaker 3: dot com to see a picture of Beverly and fan
Speaker 3: check out our show art on Spotify. Check out the
Speaker 3: photos from our other episodes this season two, and if
Speaker 3: you do listen to Heavyweight on Spotify, be sure to
Speaker 3: click the follow button. If you listen anywhere else, please
Speaker 3: don't tell my boss Alex
Speaker 2: Dott